The 2008 PanPac Diary...

In the beginning...

It all started as one of those good ideas. The Flyers, having attended the 2004 PanPac games in force and then lesser numbers in 2006 (just Tarquin and John as paddle tarts) decided to make the big effort for 2008. It all came on the back of a very successful campaign at the 2007 Australasian Masters Games in Adelaide where over 20 Flyers put on a show and came away with some bling.

So it was on. The usual slow start with people getting their flight and accommodation bookings in place, and then a bit of a rush a few months ago with everyone locking in accommodation. At the close of registrations, 40 Flyers had booked in - 32 women and 8 men. To help make up the numbers for the Mixed and Open crews, Drew and Bob from Navmat joined in along with several blokes from the Port Hacking Crew (for the Open crew only).

As the paddling venue is a distance from the airport and the first event at 6am, Cheryl David volunteered to organise a bus to at least get the Flyers to the venue on time. Timeliness is not normally used in the same sentence as the Flyers. Current conversion factor is: Local Time + 15 minutes = Flyers' Time.

So it was on.

Ready and raring to go

Members of the Flyers Grand Masters Womens team, modelling the new Flyers racing tops before heading off to the PanPacs.

They will be joined by other Flyers, a couple of guys from Navmat and a bunch from the Port Hacking crew to make up Mixed and Open crews, in the Masters and Grand Masters categories.

It all begins....

Day One

It all looked good to start with - well as best as it can when you have to get up at 5am. The Flyers staked out their spot and made it into a home - if you like the cluttered look.

Head Coach Tarquin Ralph fired up the crews with an inspirational address - with apologies to the 4 Tops:

Now if you feel that you can't go on
Because all of your hope is gone
And your life is filled with much confusion
Until happiness is just an illusion
And your world around is crumbling down
Reach out - lock your bottom arm out, remember the A-Frame (ok the last bit wasn't in the song)

The course was located at Varsity Lakes, in the middle of a housing area, where they backed onto the water and had their private jetties. Who knows what they thought of a bunch of people chanting and screaming up and down the water, but we saw only a few people out watching us.

Day One was for the 200m events. All of the paddlers had a heavy schedule, with Master and Grandmasters, in the Womens, Mixed and Open events. Some of the blokes ended up doing 11 races in the day, and many of the girls had to do back to back races. The cross winds made it tricky for the starters and sweeps, and a few boats decided to do their own thing. Photo's were taken and are being collected and will be posted up in the next few days.

Highlights of Day One were:

• Grandmasters Women picking up Silver
• Grandmasters Mixed being squeezed out of third, by only a metre
• Teresa, after a race deciding that she wanted to speed things up and just step over the side of the boat from bench three and wade in, only to find that instead of going up to her knees in the water she went up to her armpits - no Teresa isn't that short, the bank dropped away steeply
• A few races later, Joe thinking that Teresa's efforts were half hearted, stepped over the side from bench two and managed to face plant into the water. As his cap floated past we wondered how long he could hold his breath, but he eventually surfaced

Day Two

After a quietish night (relatively speaking) we all got out there bright and early and set up shop. While the Flyers area was nicely organised, with a few chairs out the back, we were outdone by Navmat where they picked up a set of those kids alphabet floor tiles from a garage sale next to where one of their cars was parked.

The 500am days are always something you look forward to with a sense of trepidation. You know that once you get that long rythmn going it's good, but it's going to hurt for twice as long as the 200m races.

The Grandmaster Womens team bought home the bling, silver again in a very hard fought final. The 500m was particularly close and a real test of character, with only 1 second separating first to fourth. The Flyers managed to pip the Brisbane River Dragons by 0.29 seconds to grab second. This is a real credit to their hard work and the coaching of Robyne Kellett (she’s ours now!) and captaining of Val Field.

The blokes, spurred on by the efforts of the girls tried their hardest (with the Hackers and the Masters Girls), making the medal finals of the Masters Open and Grandmasters Open. To make things interesting, Dave Abel decided the regatta was a perfect opportunity to get at least two of his regatta sweeping efforts out of the way - well maybe it was more about him being carried to the boat. At least he looked striking in his yellow vest at the back of the boat - and it would have made it easy to find him in the water, just in case.

Tarquin and Robyne welcoming Dave back to shore after his first race sweep

Our Masters girls also had the opportunity to paddle with the Hackers team - and found out that the Flyers have a severe lack of team songs - something they plan to remedy.

More will be added in the following days, including:

• Who managed to sweep his first race in very trying conditions
• Who won the inaugural 'Captain Pugwash look alike competition'
• and many photos....